Phoenix

I don't think you understand. Fundamentally I'll always be Emptiness, conventionally I'll always be human. Whatever state I'm in, this life or in the astral universe beyond, I'll always be the vessel and the consciousness within the vessel. Remove either and both perish; when a drop of water falls into the ocean it becomes the ocean.

You're right. I don't understand. Understanding isn't something I do much of. That's why I have no difficulty being whatever I am, or am engaged in, or with. This was not always the case, but for a long time, I sought to understand. Now I prefer mystery.

One thing though: what makes you think you'll always be a vessel? Consciousness, once realized, needs no vessel.

Logged

Phoenix

I'm saying the vessel and the consciousness are co-existent as an individual agent of consciousness.

It's like there's an ocean of consciousness unlimited in quantity and identical in quality, non-local and timeless, just existing. Pieces of it extend into denser realms. A piece of something infinite in quantity and otherwise identical is not delineated by any physical form since its quantity is unlimited. Its delineation into form is precisely the form itself, the vessel, which incidentally is also consciousness but much denser. Of course, then, there's nothing there, except certain denser forms have the magical potential for sentience, whereby they can be the ego of the unlimited ocean and give it the experiences it could never have on its own. Spirit ensouled in flesh.

Did you ever consider that by attempting to define a wonder, it becomes considerably less wonderful, when restricted by the limits of your definition? And even more by the limits of the one you describe it to? I've always been struck by the manifest pointlessness of philosophy.

Huh. The great secret for me was that the divine and the material are the same. It all has meaning. Life itself is a living thing with it's own purpose. The point is to get over our individualism, and do something greater than what everyone else is doing, which is being individualistic. Just like in a horror film: the people who have emotional reactions die first, but the people who keep their heads make it to the end.

Learning doesn't equal life. You can learn plenty, but still you may not be really living. In fact, the more you learn, the less likely you are to notice you are alive. I really didn't know what life was, until I cleared out every last thing from my mind, and became what was left. There is no secret to this. Anyone can do it. Almost nobody does.